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The Fake Outrage Over Fake News

Fake outrage fake news

Fake news propagation is nothing new or sinister. It just pissed off the wrong ideology this time.


In the past week, we’ve seen fallout from all corners of the media commentariat. Donald Trump’s historic and mostly unforeseen newsquake of an election victory has prompted journalists, analysts, politicians, business leaders and celebrities to probe the deepest bowels of their souls in search of some kind of soothing explanation for how a person so, let’s say, culturally distasteful could garner 60 million+ votes and take lawful control of the federal government.

The public distress has been sudden and piercing, washing over us in a tidal wave of smartphone notifications. Trump’s victory reminded the world that nearly everyone with a platform was dead wrong about what Americans think, and in some cases, failed to look outside their own media bubbles. But instead of being contrite and self-effacing, a large share of the post-election coverage — in outlets such as the Washington PostCNN and Politico — has been marked by a combination of denial, redoubled efforts to undress Trump, and public scapegoating. The latest whipping boy is the phenomenon of fake news circulating social media, which depending on the source, is anything from a dangerous tool of Donald Trump to an outright threat to democracy.

Fake news is definitely a problem. In a functioning democratic republic like ours, no one is well served by the proliferation of outrageous lies expressly fabricated to drive influence toward a particular ideological bent. In fact, we already have a name for this kind of thing: propaganda.

With that said, it’s worth remembering that propaganda and the dissemination of phony information has been with us since the founding of the United States. During the American Revolution, the war of the press, and thus ideas, was in many ways every bit as important as the physical fight on the field of battle. Misinformation and false news was a tool of both sides, and separating truth from fiction became a critical responsibility for British and American military commanders when plotting their strategies. It was fake news and the rise of “yellow journalism” that many observers credit with manipulating the USA into fighting the Spanish American War.

In the modern era, fake news has been both a lightning rod for controversy and a source for entertainment. The National Enquirer, notorious for spreading canards in the form of third party hearsay, has been in business since the 1920s, surviving countless lawsuits in the process. Satirical publications like The Onion have found a similar form of mass appeal in the digital era, with millions of readers and a more legitimate pop culture-oriented spinoff called the AV Club.

Any American with a Baby Boomer in her life has probably received a chain email in the past 20 years containing an utterly preposterous conservative take that attributed the ravings of a right wing loon to an eminent historian, scholar or respected leader. This trend, of course, gave rise to the Urban Legends Reference Pages, AKA Snopes.com, which has been dedicated to debunking goofy Internet lore since 1995. God knows how many voters, in the meantime, have been swayed toward a terrible candidate by the prevaricated racism of Abe Lincoln or Walter Cronkite.

A closer look at the latest fake news development reveals that pretty much every column inch of this “evil filth” that crossed the Internets during the election run-up was anti-Hillary or pro-Trump in nature. And that’s the real sin, here. Democrats are still searching for a source of blame in the wake of the Trump win. Whether its Russia, James Comey or the Electoral College, someone’s got hell to pay.

In fairness, the Republicans have been doing a similar thing to the Daily Show and Colbert Report for years. And it’s mostly petulant and stupid when they do it, too. But fake news is not a sudden or novel epidemic. It’s a partisan straw man to implicate in the hopes of alleviating some of the pain that comes from acknowledging self-inflicted wounds.

A more important truth is that this “problem” can only be solved by one thing: people must use critical thinking skills. Like it or not, we have to aspire to a society in which individual citizens are responsible for forming their own opinions and attempting to sift through the noise to arrive at a smart conclusion. This involves a combination of good parenting, decent public education, civic responsibility and accountable journalism. But ultimately it’s about people not acting like sheeple.

Of course, this doesnt absolve purveyors and enablers of bullshit. Another question is about how this content is treated by big time Internet players like Facebook and Google, who while claiming themselves not part of the media, have become the engine that drives almost all online news media. These companies have a moral obligation to prevent mass distribution of damaging lies. But there is a fine line between fighting libelous slime and making definitive rulings about what constitutes a legitimate news outlet and what doesn’t. Go too far into one direction and there will almost certainly be strong bias injected into the delivery of critical information (see last summer’s criticisms of Facebook’s trending news feed).

It’s self evident that these sites have a responsibility to suppress patently false info that does not appear to be meant as humor. But on the other hand, it sets a bad precedent to automatically regard information as reliable or accurate just because it comes from a favorable source (i.e. the NYT or CNN). In case any of us caught amnesia this week, the past six months have demonstrated that even the paragons of American journalistic integrity are not above reproach. Some of the recent Wikileaks findings demonstrate a disgusting lack of transparency and journalistic ethics. Not to mention implied disdain for readers.

These episodes —as well as stories like the Duke Lacrosse scandal, the Gawker-Hulk Hogan feud, and the Rolling Stone rape case, recently settled for millions — demonstrate that sloppy reporting, ideological bias and factual errors pop up far too often in even the most revered mainstream media outlets. Meanwhile, important facts and reporting often come from bloggers and little-known media in these days of citizen journalism.

With respect to Internet operations, social media companies should employ more editorial-minded moderators and news curators, with ideological diversity and trained journalism and media backgrounds, to get involved in the finding and presentation of information. Media teams made up of 90% progressive thinkers, many of whom know little about how to operate in an unbiased newsroom, will surely create problems moving forward. As an open society in a free market, however, we must resist the temptation to telegraph to readers how they should think. This means allowing fake news to exist, calling it out as such when possible, and trusting Americans not only to decide what to believe for themselves but also to accept the consequences of their actions.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Laura Bittner.